100 Days of Bilingualism – Week Seven

Each Monday you will receive a week’s worth of multilingual activities that you can do at home with your children. Not only will it be fun for your entire bilingual family, it will boost your children’s bilingualism into the stratosphere!

Maria, a former school teacher who is currently homeschooling her four children in Spanish and English, is your 100 Days of Bilingualism guide. She loves to hear from you, so please leave comments about your own 100 days journey along the way!

In case you missed the previous posts, click here to read all of the 100 Days of Bilingualism posts.

Without further ado, let us pass things over to Maria who will lead you through another week of fantastic multilingual fun and activities…

Week 7: October 22-26

Here we are in days 31-35 already!

The seasons continue to move forward: The air continues to turn a bit colder and the days are just a bit shorter. This week we’ll make our own fall tree, invent a new sport, get our bodies moving and cuddle up under a blanket with some good books in your target language.

Through it all remember that these are all ways to talk with your children and reinforce your language growth with rich language examples and interesting conversations. Your number lines and jars which are slowly filling up offer a way to talk about numbers on a daily basis. The activities are a fun way to spend some extra time together in your language. Have a great week!

Materials for the week:

large piece of butcher paper (or multiple sheets of paper you can tape together)

glue

brown paint

book/books in your language to read out loud

tape measure

large rocks or other object to mark start and finish of races

Monday – 100 day journal

Journal week 7:This week use your imagination to invent a new sport.What are the rules? What do you need to play? Do you need any special gear or clothes?

Encourage your children to use their imaginations and include as much detail as possible. This is a great way to expand vocabulary but remember to enjoy and support the process and not worry too much about the perfection about the final product.

Tuesday – Creating/Art Activity – 100 leaf fall tree

We will be using the leaves we collected last week to create a 100 leaf fall tree to help us mark the passage of the season.

Cover your workspace with a tarp or other cloth you don’t mind getting dirty. (This activity lends itself to the kitchen floor in our house.)

Put down a large piece of butcher paper (ours is about 3×5 ft).

Using the brown paint help your children paint a large trunk and several branches (for younger kids you might do this part ahead of time).

Now take the 100 leaves you collected last week and glue them onto your tree. Feel free to glue some leaves under the tree on the ground or ones that are falling on their way down – it is fall after all!

Once you have all your leaves glued on let it dry and then put it up on a clear wall to enjoy for a couple weeks.

While the kids are gluing on the leaves be sure to fill your work-time with talking about things like fall, trees, leaves changing, seasons, colors, numbers. There is a lot to chat about!

Wednesday – Get Moving Activity – 10×10 races

As the cold weather rolls in we need another reason to get outside and move our bodies. This week you need to find a place where you can mark off 10 yards. Once you have your 10 yards marked get ready to begin. For each of the following activities you will race for 10 yards doing the motion listed. Have fun!

hop

skip

run backwards

walk

2 foot jump

glide

grapevine

leap

crabwalk

run

Thursday – 100 word book – 5 sports words

This week we’ll add 5 sports words to our growing books of new vocabulary. As usual try to gather words that you don’t already use regularly even if it means a visit to the dictionary.

This week we’ll end with some cozy reading time. Depending on the ages of your children you can make this one 100 minute reading or break it up into smaller chunks of time and read one long story or several shorter books. Whatever you decide, make sure you make it special and make sure to keep track of the time.

Gather in front of a warm fire, cuddle under blankets, and collect the book/s that you’ll be reading out loud in your language. If you have your fall tree up from earlier in the week you might read under the fall leaves and pretend you are outside enjoying the crisp autumn air.

You can decide in your family whether the parent will do all the reading or the kids will have a turn as well. Most importantly enjoy this excuse to relax and hear a great story in your language.

Conclusion

We hope you enjoy this week of 100 Days of Bilingualism!

Remember that we are doing this with our children right along with you, so we encourage you to share your thoughts, questions and experiences in the comments section each week. It is so much fun to hear from you!

Let me know if you have any questions about activities during this (or previous) weeks. We hope that you set up things during the preparation week – it will make your 100 days move along smoothly and enjoyably.

Stay tuned for our next post on Monday next week. It will be filled with another week of activities for our 100 Days of Bilingualism event.

Maria Hawkins grew up in New Mexico immersed in both Spanish and English. She has her National Teacher Certification in early childhood education and has taught in both bilingual and monolingual public schools. She currently keeps busy homeschooling her three bilingual children, teaching weekly Spanish classes for kids, and leading a Spanish Playgroup to support local bilingual families.

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